How to Show Off Your Stuff

Rach’s design buddy Evette Rios shares decorating techniques, tips and tricks to make it fun and easy to show off your collections, books, photographs and memorabilia.

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Hi. I'm Evette and I'm one of Rachael's content buddies. And I'm here to show you guys today how to make the most of your shelving and really show off your collections. So I've got some shelving back here and you can see I've organized my books by color which is a super trendy thing to do. And if you don't like necessarily the color of the actual cover, you can take it off and all books have a specific color on the spine. So I went from like orange to yellow and green. You can really have fun with that. But what I also did is I took all of my paperback books out of my shelves 'cause they were really ratty and kinda torn up and didn't look so good. And I've got this great idea for what to do with your paperback books. You basically take a shoe box, and what I did was I covered it with wrapping paper. You can use leftover paper, any kind of craft paper you have and then I put all of my ratty paperback books inside. So they fit perfectly in there. You put a cover right on them and now since it's nice and colorful. It's really gonna work with the rest of my bookshelves scheme. So moving on, I'm gonna show you guys ways that you can sort of group your collections. Here I've got a little collection of vintage soda bottles. I think these are so cute. And, you know what's great when you've got collections is you wanna group them together, put a bunch of them together so that there's more visual impact in what you've got going on versus having them sort of these solitary out there. So, I'm also using a tray here. This was inexpensive tray. But if you don't have any trays, you can always use like vintage plates or anything that you have that's colorful. And I'm just gonna put the tray up there and then put my vintage collection right on the tray. And the tray is great too because if you need to take it down, the dust that you can just pull the whole tray off instead of taking down all the little pieces. And then I'm just gonna arrange it all so that all the little labels are facing forwards. You've got a little bit more punch of color. Then I am also gonna use pairs. Pairs are really important when you're arranging stuff because they almost act as like anchors or brackets for your collections. So I've got a little set of candle sticks here and I'm just gonna put these guys like this and then I've got a bunch of little vases. You can group things by, you know, color like I'm doing here or put all your little vases together if you've got a collection of those. Always remember to put the larger stuff towards the back. So I'm just gonna squeeze this one back here. And then you just kinda wanna scoot it around 'til it looks the way that you would like it to, and I think that looks really very cool. So I've got another little collection here. These again are vases. You know, if you've got one thing that's got a lot of color to it, one way that you can sort of make the whole little, you know, still life I guess tie together is, I've got this little bird here so cute. And then I found these vases that I had that are, you know, basically coordinate with the bird. So the bird becomes the anchor and then you got all the little stuff around it that just kind of tie all together. So now I'm gonna put this guy up here to match. Let me put the shelves up little tray up first. So put the little tray up there and then I'm just gonna start again with a bigger stuff at the back and then the little bird that ties it all together right up at the front. And then to include my books 'cause you really wanna add books and pictures and everything to really give your shelves a real life to them and make them almost look like a Karao shop where you just wanna interact with everything that's on the shelves. I'm gonna take some pictures. These are family photos that I have and put them right on there. When you're putting pictures up, you know, you want to remember that family photos are always great on shelves or on flat surfaces because when people come over, they love to take them down and say, "Oh, my gosh, when was this?" You know, "Who's that in that picture?" Where is one it's on the, you know, on the wall. People can't interact with it as much, so I love putting photos on shelves. And I'm just gonna include this little red one back here to sort of tie in with the-- what I've got going on with the [unk]. And then I'm gonna include some books here too just to make it all coordinate and maybe I will use a book here as both a book end and also a little platform for my soda bottle collection. So I put my tray and then my soda bottles, like that. And then I've got my collection of snow globes, you know, if you don't collect snow globes, I'm sure you've got souvenirs from your vacations or anything that you have that's meaningful, and you just want to group them together like that. I'm gonna put them right on top of my paperback books. And you know, that's what great about shelving and just organizing your stuff like this as it's about being personal and it's about being you. There are no rules, so just have fun.